"We've seen it all. It's not really interesting to audiences anymore. The interesting things are the ideas," says Aronofsky, director of The Fountain. Apparently not, and our evidence is the 51 out of 100 rating. But you have to respect...
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"We've seen it all. It's not really interesting to audiences anymore. The interesting things are the ideas," says Aronofsky, director of The Fountain. Apparently not, and our evidence is the 51 out of 100 rating. But you have to respect Aronofsky's vision and courage. No matter how lost you feel, ultimately the point of the film is to make you feel a certain way; blissful that is, for some, and very sleepy for most others.

I found the film very hard to follow at first but if you're willing to be open minded and watch it more than once you'll begin to notice more and be rewarded. The cinematography and soundtrack alone is amazingly beautiful.

well for starters, i admit i found this movie hard to follow at first. but i have watched it again and like some of the reviews, i saw things differently. the movie had a point, not just about death and love, life and death. i saw it as something...
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well for starters, i admit i found this movie hard to follow at first. but i have watched it again and like some of the reviews, i saw things differently. the movie had a point, not just about death and love, life and death. i saw it as something we could face, a wife or husband dieing infront of us, and we trying to find a way to save them. that person being stronger then we think we could be if it was us. the spanish part is a book that was written by the wife, do to her loveing maya culture, well the understanding of it, the future part is about following what the mayas believed in. the tree in the space bubble is the tree of life, but it is dieing, as the hugh's wife is too. the point is much as we all like to live forever, we cant do it in our body. the movie goes beyond what we know, and what we will know someday. i found it enlighting. peace.

well for starters, i admit i found this movie hard to follow at first. but i have watched it again and like some of the reviews, i saw things differently. the movie had a point, not just about death and love, life and death. i saw it as something...
[+] Read Full Review

well for starters, i admit i found this movie hard to follow at first. but i have watched it again and like some of the reviews, i saw things differently. the movie had a point, not just about death and love, life and death. i saw it as something we could face, a wife or husband dieing infront of us, and we trying to find a way to save them. that person being stronger then we think we could be if it was us. the spanish part is a book that was written by the wife, do to her loveing maya culture, well the understanding of it, the future part is about following what the mayas believed in. the tree in the space bubble is the tree of life, but it is dieing, as the hugh's wife is too. the point is much as we all like to live forever, we cant do it in our body. the movie goes beyond what we know, and what we will know someday. i found it enlighting. peace.

There are only fleeting moments of intrigue peppered throughout Darren Aronofsky's pseudo-thinkpiece about love, eternal life, and...well, that's pretty much it. It's a one idea film that thinks it's a lot more interesting than it is.
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There are only fleeting moments of intrigue peppered throughout Darren Aronofsky's pseudo-thinkpiece about love, eternal life, and...well, that's pretty much it. It's a one idea film that thinks it's a lot more interesting than it is.

I give the man kudos for an interesting concept, however. Set in three different time periods (1500s Spain, 2000s America, and 2500s outer space), the almost-but-not-quite-a-story follows Thomas/Tommy and Isabella/Izzy, played by Hugh Jackman and Racheal Weisz. In Spain, Jackman is a conquistador on the hunt for the fabled tree of life for his queen (Weisz). Finding the tree which grants eternal life will save the queen from the threat of the Spanish Inquisition, or so we are led to believe. In modern times, Jackman is a medical research scientist trying to cure brain tumors, because his wife (Weisz) happens to be dying of one. Jackman is so consumed by his work that he lets the fleeting time he has left with his wife waste away, just as she does. In the far flung future, Jackman is a tai-chi loving, mediating bald astronaut in a freaky space bubble that's rocketing toward a dying star with a tree (Weisz...I think?) that keeps giving him visions of Izzy. Theoretically, this is all supposed to tie together into one overarching tale of love and eternal life. Theoretically, this is also supposed to keep an audience's attention for 96 minutes. These theories are proven incorrect rather quickly.

For starters, the tie-ins and overlaps between the timelines and stories are tenuous at best. The Spanish story is evidently a work of fiction devised by modern day Izzy in a manuscript she's been writing. The future tale is, for all intents and puroses, Aronofsky's way of masturbating onto film for significant chunks of the movie. There's no point to it except to have Hugh Jackman look crazy, talk to a tree who may or may not be a manifestation of his dead wife, and show a lot of pretty colors. Yes, the colors are gorgeous, but for the love of god, why am I looking at them? Why is he in the future? Why are they rocketing toward a dying star? What the hell is the deal with this space bubble?

Metaphors, man, metaphors! That's all The Fountain is--a long, twisting, irritating metaphor telling you, the viewer, that death, through love, brings eternal life. When we die, we live forever, so long as we are loved. Love transcends death, get it? Love. Death. Life. You'd think the ridiculously heavy-handed ending would have been enough to get the point across, but Aronofsky goes a few steps further by loading the film with too many visual ticks for any human being to ignore. He's walking down a darkened hallway, and there's a light at the end of it. Get it? DO YOU GET IT?!?! No? OK, how about we do it about five more times throughout the movie? NOW DO YOU GET IT?!?

One might be willing to put up with all the metaphorical sledgehammering if there were actually a story to care about, but there isn't one. I love artistic film making as much as the next guy, but if there isn't a story to care about and characters to latch onto, it's not a movie. And The Fountain has neither. Weisz sleepwalks her way through this whole movie, and Jackman, while admirable in spots, hams it up pretty rude, especially during the future sequences. It's not entirely the actor's faults. Aronofsky and writing partner Ari Handel leave these characters hollow. They're empty vessels, flung into situations that neither evoke the supposed tragedy of the story, nor provide satisfactory emotional resonance for two people that are supposed to be as in love as the story would like to have them be. Jennifer Connolly's emotionally broken drug addict and Keith David's sleazy drug pusher in Aronofsky's last film, Requiem for a Dream, made for more interesting lovers than these two deflated shells masquarading as characters.

Part of me wants to give Aronofsky credit for at least doing something different. The Fountain is nothing if not ambitious, and the message he wants to get across is a noble one. But for a film that's being considered high art by some, he does it in a pretty artless way, choosing to pummel the audience with non-stop metaphors and beautiful, yet pointless cinematography instead of building his artistry into something actually resembling a film with a plot, characters, and, above all else, coherence. Strictly for the super pretentious and let's-get-high-and-watch-something-trippy crowds.

I'm going to keep this one short. I like secrets.
An amazing film about Love and the belief that it can endure even the most traumatic end.
Great acting by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.
Visually one of the most stunning...
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I'm going to keep this one short. I like secrets.
An amazing film about Love and the belief that it can endure even the most traumatic end.
Great acting by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.
Visually one of the most stunning works in our time. If I may be so bold it could be equated to the power 2001 had in 1968.
You'll either love it or hate it, there is most likely no between.

I have to admit that what this movie was trying to do on a grant scale is noble. The only problem is in the actual doing it falls flat. It tells three stories in three different time lines with the same 2 characters. Its hard to characterize what...
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I have to admit that what this movie was trying to do on a grant scale is noble. The only problem is in the actual doing it falls flat. It tells three stories in three different time lines with the same 2 characters. Its hard to characterize what this movie is or what its supposed to be. Yes overall the movie is wonderfully shot but the actual story is very confusing. Its hard to keep track of what is going on and after awhile you get bored. Acting in this movie is not very good even though both leads are good actors. I really cannot recommend this movie because its not very good. The director I know had big ideas for this movie but it just did not work. Its a love story/ sci fi story/ futuristic thriiler and neither one it does well. It would have been better if the director chose one movie to make and make it in that style instead of trying to mix all three styles. In the end he makes a confusing mess of a movie thats not really worth a viewing.

artistically shot, beautifully scored, and wonderfully written. the story of eternal life and the struggle of mankind's fear of death is brilliantly displayed for the viewer to interpret to his/her own.

Andrei Tarkovsky is generally called one of the greatest movie directors of all time. Why is that? Is it because he had magnificent writing skills? Is it because he somehow managed to pick the cream of the crop as far as actors go? Is it because...
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Andrei Tarkovsky is generally called one of the greatest movie directors of all time. Why is that? Is it because he had magnificent writing skills? Is it because he somehow managed to pick the cream of the crop as far as actors go? Is it because he was able to direct pretty frames? No. It's because he could direct pretty frames with a meaning. Every single frame has been designed and well, framed, with an obscure amount of skill, creating perfection. This does not only create pretty frames; it creates pretty frames with a meaning. What does this have to do with Darren Aronofsky's new movie, The Fountain? Aronofsky has reached the point where he can create pretty frames with a meaning. Is there really much more that needs to be said about the directing of the movie? I mean it's more than enough to say that the man is on the same level as Andrei Tarkovsky. Aronofsky's screenplay is pretty much equal in quality. Apparently he wanted to recreate the sci-fi genre, in the same way that Star Wars did back in the day. In my opinion he succeeded, as impossible as it may sound. Unlike many modern sci-fi films, the future part of this movie features no technology, which is great. I'm tired to see how fast spaceships can go, or how effective laser beams are when destroying planets. The special effects, which do not use CGI, are absolutely stunning. It's all done by macroimaging, which basically means taking really sharp, little images of blood cells and such. It looks amazing, and it shows off the best in the ending, which is the most beautiful ending I've seen during my life, and it's perfectly held together by Clint Mansell's excellent score. The acting in this movie has been called somewhat steady, and people claim it has no variety. I beg to differ. The only reason Hugh Jackman propably agreed to do this movie is because his characters are all extremely different, and so he also gets to show off his different emotional stances, instead of simply showing how much hair he can grow and then shave in the name of his role. I was especially impressed with what this "wolverine" could do with the doctor character, who is almost constantly in pain and torment. Also, he showed great despair around the end as the Zen-guru. Weisz is somewhat balanced between her two roles; as the wife, she shines with joy of the little life she has left, and as the queen she is dead serious about everything. It works well, and she also gets to show off her acting talents. Ellen Burstyn and many others come by for side roles, but they stay in the shadows, as they should. This is a movie about two people in love. Well okay, 5 people in love, and one is in love with a tree. But still. The Fountain is, in my opinion, the best movie of 2006 alongside Children Of Men. It would have entirely revolutionized sci-fi cinema if it would've been properly marketed. But instead it flopped. Sometimes this is the fate of great movies and I accept it. I just hate to see a new Michael Bay-flick surpass something that migh make people care about themselves, and make them happy. Oh well. **** happens.